CHAPTER XII.
PAMELA SAYS "YES."
It was May now, and the evenings were long and sweet. Eight o'clock rang from the clock-tower at Glengall, and Pamela Graydon stood by the Wishing Well in the woods and looked down into the little cup of clear water. Memory was very keen in her this delicious, scented evening.
No word had come from Anthony Trevithick, and Pamela had ceased to expect any long ago. On her father's account as much as on her own she was filled with dull anger against him—an anger that hurt.
She had had no communication with the house in Brook Street, except her hastily scribbled line to Lady Kitty when Mr. Graydon began to creep back out of the shadow of death, and the answering letter, full of a sympathy which would have surprised some in Lady Kitty's world, if they could but have read it.
"Anthony thinks of getting his Uncle Wilton moved home as soon as possible," was one of Lady Kitty's bits of news. "He will never be very strong again, but he is out of danger. Of course, they will have to go warily, so Anthony will hardly be here before full summer."
"He, may stay away for ever, so far as I am concerned," had been Pamela's comment as she thrust the letter into her little old desk. Indeed, at the time, in the extremity of her relief at her father's illness having taken a turn for the better, her love affair seemed a paltry thing and not worth thinking upon.
But now that the strain was over her loneliness returned. She looked with sad eyes upon the summer landscape, and the moan of May wood-doves from near and far seemed to be the voice of her pain.
She often wondered if she could be the Pamela of a year ago—so gay and careless. Her sadness of late had passed unnoticed—they had all been sad—but whereas Sylvia's spirits had gone up with a bound, and Mary's mood was one of quiet and thankful joy, the great fear being removed, Pamela, after the first relief, felt only a flatness and dulness of the spirit which seemed never likely to lift; for Pam looked to her future with all the hopelessness of very young girlhood.
She sat down on a mossy tree trunk and listened with her chin in her hand to the last song of the thrush.